Head restraints protect vehicle occupants from suffering serious injury due to sudden movement of the vehicle. Head restraints typically extend upward from the top of a vehicle seat and are anchored within the seat assembly.
While head restraints are necessary in order to insure the safety of passengers, at times the head restraints can present difficulties. For example, head restraints can obstruct a driver's view when looking rearward. Also, if a seat is folded forward to allow a passenger to enter the rear portion of a vehicle, a head restraint may contact an object in front of the seat thus stopping the seat from fully folding down. In vehicles with seats that fold flat into the floor, head restraints must be removed or additional stowage space in the floor of the vehicle must be provided.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,935,696 to Gauthier et al. discloses an articulating head restraint that pivots between an up right and a folded position and includes a cam having a lock acumination and a stop acumination. The cam is under a biasing force of a torsion spring and interacts with slide to lock the head restraint in the upright position.
While foldable head restraints offer advantages over non-foldable head restraints, foldable head restraints are generally more difficult to assemble and therefore relatively more expensive.
The present invention provides an articulating head restraint that is designed to have fewer components that require individual assembling and which can allows for platformability by standardizing a component set while allowing customization by varying auxiliary components.